Postcards
by KamikazeCreamPuff
Summary: In which Alice and Hatter win the lottery, sell their belongings, and go travel the world. Hijinks ensue, one city at a time! Alice/Hatter, funtimes fic!


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It all started with a ticket.

Well, then again it _ended_ with a ticket too, but the beginning is most important for now because everything starts there. Start at the beginning, go to the end, and then stop – that's how the saying goes.

How it _started_ was that Hatter came home one day with a lottery ticket and pinned it up on the fridge.

"What is that?" Alice asked behind him, eyebrow raised in the absolute picture of skepticism.

"It's a lottery ticket."

"Yes, I can see that, but why did you _buy_ it? Those things are black holes for money."

"Well, you never know," he said, kissing her on the cheek and starting to put plates and forks on the table to join their Styrofoam Temple of Chinese. "We might get lucky."

Which, two weeks later, they did.

$25,000 worth of lucky.

Not enough to set them for life, Alice's mother pointed out, but they didn't care. As far as they were concerned, the world was their oyster… no pun intended.

"So what are we going to do with it?" Alice asked, looking rather disheveled from some victory sex on the couch. He pulled the bank receipt out of his pocket from when they'd deposited the check earlier that day.

"Whatever we want," he said, waving it playfully in her face.

"We really should put it towards getting a bigger place," she said. "You know—" her mind was going fuzzy, he was doing some _interesting_ things to the shell of her ear, "—invest it in something… or something…"

"I suppose that would be the respectable, grown-up thing to do," he said, dotting kisses along her collarbone. "But what do we _want_ to do?"

Alice hung her head back over the arm of the couch with a dreamy sigh, letting Hatter work his magic while she considered. _What do I want to do…?_

"I want to see the world," she sighed.

Hatter turned his head up, much to her chagrin, to look at her in surprise. "Really?"

"Yeah," she said. "I mean, really _see_ it, you know? Mom and I never got the chance when I was growing up."

Hatter tilted her head back up to look at him – he was grinning excitedly. "Let's do it!"

Alice looked at him blankly. "Do what?" But he was already in the midst of planning.

"Travel! We've got enough money – let's sell the apartment, buy a car, and just…" he waved an errant hand in the direction of the 'world'. "…go! Let's just _go_, Alice!"

Alice rolled her eyes and waved a hand in his face. "Okay, a couple things wrong with this plan. One," she counted on her fingers, "We've got a five-year lease on this apartment."

"We can rent it out to someone."

"Two, what are we going to do with all of our stuff?"

"Sell it, and the really important stuff we can rent storage for or keep it at your mother's."

"Three, neither of us can _drive_. I know _you_ can't, and I've lived with public transportation my whole life."

"It'll take a few months to get everything sorted out, I'm sure we can learn in the meantime."

"Four, living on a perpetual road trip sounds horrible."

"We'd stay at some cities for awhile, rent out a place. A week here, a couple weeks there."

Alice looked at him agog. "Hatter, you're really serious about this, aren't you?"

He smiled and drew her close, nuzzling her cheek. "_You've_ never seen your world, and neither have I," he said. "What d'you say we explore it _together_?"

_Well,_ she thought, _when he puts it like that, how can I resist?_

_..

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Her mother thought she was crazy, of course. ("Don't you want to save that money for your future children?") Still, she let them store a few boxes in Alice's old bedroom and kept _most_ of her opinions to herself over the next few months as Alice and Hatter sold, bartered, saved, and _tried_ to learn how to drive. By the end of the year, between selling their belongings and leasing their apartment, they had a total of $50,000 in their bank account and a brand-new station wagon with two humongous duffel bags in the backseat. Alice insisted on spending the impending Christmas with her mother instead of on the road, and Hatter agreed that starting an adventure on New Years' Day had a ring of poetry to it, so they gave their two-week's notice and settled in for their last few days in San Fransisco.

"You're _sure_ you want to do this?" asked her mother worriedly the night before they left. It was a lazy sort of evening, the three of them sitting and talking with an open bottle of wine between them. Alice was starting to forget what it had been like living with just the two of them – Hatter had slipped easily into their lives as though he were already family. Alice shook her head, trying (and failing) to imagine Jack sitting in his place being poured an extra glass of wine by her mother.

Hatter was special.

"Yeah," she answered. "We're sure."

"But are you going to be _safe_?" she asked for what was probably the thousandth time.

"We've got phones," Hatter repeated, "and we'll be together the whole time, and we've got plenty enough money to fly home on a moment's notice in case of an emergency. Besides, Carol, you know I'd never let Alice sleep starving on the streets."

"And all that martial arts training wasn't just to keep me fit, remember," Alice defended. "Come on, Mom, I know you did some crazy things in the 70s, and you turned out fine."

Carol might have smiled a little. "Yes. Well. Maybe I'm a bit jealous. You will remember to call or write whenever you can?"

"Of course," Alice said, leaning over and giving her a tight hug. "Thanks, Mom."

"Like I could stop you," she sighed. "I've never been able to stop you from doing _anything_ you wanted to do. It's only gotten worse since you brought _this_ one around," she said, nodding conspiratorially toward Hatter.

"Oi!" But he was grinning, flashing that obscene dimple their way. The two women looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

"Well," her mother said, "I'm not going to make it to midnight, so I'll just leave you two kids alone." She got up and put her wine glass in the sink. "Wake me up before you leave in the morning, will you?"

"Of course, Mom," Alice said, crawling over to join Hatter on his side of the couch and stealing a sip of his wine. "See you in the morning."

Hatter tucked Alice into his arm as Carol turned out of view and took the opportunity to steal back his wine glass. "So," he asked, looking down at her with a smile. "Where do you want to go first?"

She leaned up and rested her forehead against his. "Anywhere. Pick the nearest highway in any direction. We'll figure it out as we go."

"That's the spirit."

And not long after, they rung in the New Year.

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**A/N:** This is one of those fics that will get updated whenever I feel like it. 3 In the meantime, please leave reviews with places you'd like them to go! I've already got a list going, but I'd love contributions! Don't feel pressured to keep it to just the continental U.S., either – the whole world is fair game for these two! ^_^


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